Kanelis: Will they come if we build it?

Downtown Amarillo planners have an idea that sounds grand in principle.

They are suggesting, with the help of an urban consultant's initial analysis, that the city can sustain a multipurpose athletic and activities venue in the city's central business district.

It's all part of a master plan aimed at remaking downtown into something that bears little resemblance to what it is today, or what it used to be.

I am not yet sure how to define what downtown will resemble - and I'm not yet clear that the downtown planners themselves yet know what form the district will take when it's all done.

The ballpark perhaps is the most intriguing and ambitious idea I've seen for the downtown district.

Melissa Dailey runs Downtown Amarillo Inc., the nonprofit organization charged with spearheading the district's revival - along with Center City, City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce and all other interested movers and shakers in Amarillo.

She sees the downtown park as a distinct possibility for the city, replacing the so-called ballpark known these days as the Amarillo National Bank Dilla Villa - which will need to change its name, given that the Amarillo Dillas' minor-league baseball franchise no longer is doing business here.

The Dallas-based consultant cited the Dillas' attendance, at nearly 2,800 fans per game, as a reason for optimism. That's fine, except that the Dillas had an aggressive promotion program that allowed most of those fans into the Dilla Villa for free on game night.

All those free admissions and lost revenue certainly contributed to the Dillas' financial problems, which led to Potter County terminating its agreement for the Dillas to do business in Amarillo.

Dailey understands that and noted that the study was done as if the Dilla Villa didn't exist.

But it does.

And it is a dump.

Downtown planning executives are hoping that a sparkling, shiny new venue would be a draw by itself. They surely are aware of the Dilla Villa's rotten condition.

One of them referred to the place as "an aging ballpark." Aging?

Well, it's far more than that.

Fenway Park in Boston - which opened April 20, 1912 - is an "aging ballpark," but to baseball fans all across North America it is akin to the National Pastime's version of the Taj Mahal or the Parthenon.

Fenway is a work of art.

The Dilla Villa? Well, it's a piece of ... something very unpleasant.

There can be no doubt that the city can do better with a new ballpark.

The "how?" and the "how much?" remain the key questions.

This process is still in its beginning stages. Downtown's big thinkers might need to ponder which should come first - the team or the ballpark.

You'll recall James Earl Jones telling Kevin Costner in the film "Field of Dreams": "Build it and they will come."

Who can knows whether that can happen here? It might require a giant leap of faith to believe that construction of a first-class minor-league ballpark downtown by itself will be enough of a magnet for an equally first-class minor-league franchise to play ball here.

Or, it might be that the city needs to lock up an ironclad commitment from a franchise - preferably affiliated with a Major League Baseball club - to set up shop in Amarillo before breaking ground on a new ballpark.

All this will have to be worked out over time.

For now, Amarillo's downtown planners are reaching far beyond where they have gone before. And at the moment a downtown park remains a potential part of the downtown's future.

We'll all need to know better what that future holds before determining when - or whether - to break ground.